The hybrid rune didn't just starve. It screamed.
Kael hunkered in the filth-strewn shadows beneath New Avalon's wastewater channels, the Academy's alarms crying far above. Rain — thick with industrial runoff — sluiced off broken concrete, pooling around his boots. His right hand was a caged star. Violet-indigo light leaked through his clenched fingers, casting jagged shadows on the dripping walls. Each pulse echoed the biting void in his bones.
Feed me, the rune murmured. Or I eat you instead.
He'd devoured the Skyreach Gate's death throes. Now, his life force was the only fuel left.
"Crash. Crash. THUD."
Heavy boots pounded the walkways overhead. Searchlights skewered the toxic fog.
"—Last seen, Sector 7-G!" a mechanized voice barked.
"Void terrorist classification! Kill on sight!"
Silas. He'd moved fast. Kael's face now glared from every rune screen in the city: WANTED – MURDER PRIORITY. The reward? Ten thousand credits. Enough to buy a slum lord's loyalty. Or a grave in the dark.
Kael pressed his burning palm against the damp concrete. The rune flared, drinking the last scraps of void energy from the pipes, stale and sharp. The gnawing eased… for now.
Survive. Find the Scarred Seeker. Burn Silas's world down.
A child's whisper cut through the downpour:
"Rune-eater…"
Kael froze. A small figure stood ten paces away — a girl no older than eight, her face half-hidden by a tattered hood. Her eyes reflected his rune-light: wide, unblinking, violet.
"You glow," she murmured. "Just like the Preacher."
Before Kael could speak, she shot into a crack in the tunnel wall.
He followed, crashing through dripping stone into a cavern lit by bioluminescent fungi. The air hung thick with the scent of wet earth and ozone.
And there it rose:
The Canal Cathedral.
Not a building. A cave system transformed. Crumbling statues of forgotten saints stood watch beside flickering rune-tech generators. Neon prayer strips — salvaged from billboards — dangled from stalactites ("POWER IS SALVATION", "THE GATES JUDGE"). At the far end, a shattered stained-glass window (once depicting Seeker martyrs) had been patched with scrap metal and wire. Beneath it, on a throne of rusted reactor cores, sat the Scarred Seeker.
He looked older in the fungal glow. The scar cutting from brow to cheek seemed deeper. His worn armor was gone, replaced by a patchwork cloak of circuit boards and ballistic weave.
"Took you long enough, kid." His voice was rock wrapped in fatigue.
"Silas's dogs are chewing through my outer tunnels."
Kael stepped forward, rune-light sketching the cavern floor.
"You knew. About Soul-Forging. About the Assessors."
"Knew?" The Seeker's laugh was a dry cough. "I helped build the prototypes. Before I realized they weren't weaponizing the Void…"
He leaned forward, eyes like shards of obsidian. "…they were feeding it."
He tossed Kael a chunk of black stone veined with indigo.
"Resonance mineral. From the deepest tunnels. It'll quiet that thing on your hand… for a while."
Kael caught it. The rune's scream softened to a hungry murmur as it drank the ore's energy.
"Why help me?"
"Because Silas fears you. And what he fears, he destroys." The Seeker pointed to Kael's neck. "That collar? It's not just a tracker. It's a cage. Silas made it to contain me… before I cut it out."
He pulled back his collar. A knotted scar, raw and recent, circled his throat.
"He refined it for you. Stronger. Crueler."
Footsteps echoed in the outer tunnels. Shouts. Closer.
The Seeker stood.
"No time for history lessons. You need to vanish." He shoved a rusted data chip into Kael's hand.
Locations of Silas's Soul-Forge labs. Hit them. Starve the Gates. And Kael?" His gaze locked on the hybrid rune.
"Once you break the other lab… let the rune devour. It's the only way to break the collar's grip."
Kael stared at the chip.
"What happens when the rune's hunger outgrows the labs?"
The Seeker's grin was a blade.
"Then you feed it, Silass."
An explosion shook the cavern. Dust rained from the ceiling.
"GO!" The Seeker pushed Kael toward a hidden gap.
"The girl will guide you!"
The child — her violet eyes bright — grabbed Kael's wrist. Her touch was ice.
"This way, Rune-eater!"
As Kael plunged into darkness, he looked back.
The Scarred Seeker stood before his throne, a heavy-caliber gun in each hand. Seekers in the Institute's black poured into the cavern, rifles raised. Silas's voice crackled over their comms:
"Take the old man alive! I want his screams to—"
The Seeker's guns thundered. Muzzle flashes lit his scarred face — fierce, wild, finally free.
"COME ON, YOU GHOSTS!" he roared.
"LET'S REMIND SILAS WHY HE FEARED US!"
The girl yanked Kael deeper. The gunfire faded, replaced by the trickle of water and the rune's relentless gnawing.
Kael Thorn ran — not toward safety, but toward war.
End of Chapter 10.